Anthony Horneck, originally from Germany, came to England in the 1660’s. He published two significant devotional works, The Fire of the Altar in 1683 and The Crucified Jesus in 1686. In these works he speaks with intense feeling about spiritual communion with the Lord. He denies transubstantiation and consubstantiation and sees the words ‘This is my body’ in the Eucharist referring to a sign or figure or remembrance only. For Horneck the eating of Christ in the Eucharist is only possible as a spiritual and subjective act of the soul.

In The Crucified Jesus, Horneck says:

“Transubstantiation is a thing which neither the Scripture nor the primitive Church did ever acknowledge; and, there being nothing in the word of God to establish it, and being besides contrary to all sense and reason, we must be first given up to believe a lie, as some men it seems are (2 Thess. ii. 11), before we can give assent unto it. … As these words ‘This is My body’ do not infer a Transubstantiation, so neither do they import a Consubstantiation, a word as hard as the former, and which have been taken up by the Lutheran Protestants to express their opinion that Christ’s glorified body is in, with, and under the element of the bread in the Holy Sacrament, or hid under it, a doctrine which they ground upon the ubiquity of Christ’s body, or being everywhere or in all places, which privilege they fancy was communicated to Christ’s human nature by its being joined with the divine. … Christ is present in the Holy Sacrament by His power and influence and gracious assistances, which sincere believers feel in their worthy receiving; but from hence it can never be made out that His body therefore is hid under the bread. … In what sense the bread in this Sacrament is the body of Christ, we may only guess, if we explain Scripture by Scripture, and compare this expression with others not unlike it. 1. ‘This is My body’, that is, This is a significant emblem or sign or figure of My body; or this bread, thus broken, represents My body, that shall be crucified for the sins of the world. … 2. ‘This is My body’, that is, This bread is My body as the roaster lamb in the great fesitival of the Jews was the Passover, that is, the memorial of it. … 3. That Christ’s Church is often called His body none can be ignorant that peruses these passages, Col. i. 18, Eph. iv. 12, 1 Cor. x. 16, 1 Cor. xii. 27; and though that sense we have already alleged be the principal thing aimed at in these words, ‘This is My body’, yet to show how little need there is to have recourse either to Transubstantiation or Consubstantiation, rather than run into such absurdities, we might very well say that the bread is am emblem or adumbration of Christ’s body, that is, of Christ’s Church.” (Horneck, The Crucified Jesus, chapter xi. Sections 1-3, cited in Stone, 1909: II, 460-461).

Here Horneck clearly denies both transubstantiation and consubstantiation. For him there is no sense in which Christ can be present in the bread and wine of the Eucharist ‘in’, ‘with’ or ‘under’ the elements. The only sense in which Horneck sees Christ can be present in the Eucharist is through the faith of sincere believers and in the worthy receiving. He is placing distance between the sign and the signified and therefore he seems to be working within a nominalist framework. Christ’s body can only be said to be in the Eucharist in the sense that it is an emblem, sign or figure. It can also be present as a memorial or in the expression Christ’s body the Church. The notions of real presence and memorial remembrance do not seem to be part of Horneck’s theology of the Eucharist.

In another passage from the same work, Horneck says:

“From what hath been said it is easy to conclude what it is to eat Christ’s body in this Holy Sacrament. 1. It is to contemplate Christ’s crucified body, and the cause and reasons of that crucifixion, to view all this with our warmeth thoughts, to make serious reflection on His death and agonies, and the bitterness of His passion. … 2. To eat Christ’s body is to apply the benefits of His death and passion to our souls, and to rejoice in them as our greatest treasure. … 3. To make this crucified body a persuasive and motive to holiness and obedience.” (Horneck, The Crucified Jesus, chapter xi. Sections 4, cited in Stone, 1909: II, 461).

A nominalist theology of the Eucharist is clearly present in this passage. The presence of Christ is a matter of subjective thought, contemplation and reflection as a person engages in spiritual discipline. There is no suggestion that there is any linking of the sign with the signified outside the mental processes of the communicant.

In another passage Horneck also says:

“In all writings, both ancient and modern, about this Holy Sacrament there are various rhetorical expressions used which we must not understand literally, but as flowers strewed upon the hearse of our blessed Redeemer, and as ornaments of speech, to represent the greatness of the mystery. There is nothing more common among the fathers than to call the bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper the body and blood of Christ, and the cup the vessel in which Christ’s blood is contained; and many times Christ is said to stand at the altar, and all the holy angels standing at the Table; that Christ offers His body to be bruised by the people’s teeth, and dyes them red with His blood; that the elements are changed, and become the body and blood of the Lord Jesus; and that after prayer and thanksgiving they are no more what they were before; and a thousand such expressions besides; from which the Church of Rome presently infers that that they believed a Transubstantiation or a conversion of the elements into the substances of Christ’s body and blood, than which nothing more can be absurd; for, if a man compare these sayings of the ancients with other passages in their writings, it plainly appears that they meant no more than that the elements are representative of this, and that the expressions they use are nothing but rhetorical flourishes to raise the people’s affections, and to render their devotions brisk, lively, fervent, affectionate and vigorous. We do the same at this day when we tell you that you come to feast with Christ; that in this Sacrament He is crucified before your eyes; that you may see His blood run down; that you hear Him groan under the burden of your sins; that you see here His body hanging on the cross; that you are to stand under the tree, and catch the precious gore as balsam for your souls; all which is true in a spiritual sense, and we do it to make you more attentive, and set this passion out in such lively characters that your souls may be touched and enlivened; and, as things represented in brighter colours strike the senses more, so we speak of these things as if they were visible and perceptible by the outward eyes, that your soul may more cheerfully feed on the kernel that lies in those shells, and with greater life embrace the glorious benefits, which come to you by that precious sacrifice.” (Horneck, The Crucified Jesus, chapter xi. Consid. 1, cited in Stone, 1909: II, 461-462).

Horneck here cites several of the realist expressions which come from the early church fathers, and sees them as nothing more than expressions of words. There is no realism admitted in what they say. Indeed it is his argument that the Church of Rome has taken these expressions and based the doctrine of transubstantiation on them in error. Horneck sees the conclusion of the Church of Rome as absurd. For him the expressions are no more than representations and contain no realist sense of interpretation. They are in fact nothing more than ‘rhetorical flourishes’ which lead to a more lively picture. What Horneck does is take expressions which are very immoderate sounding and use them as representations only, thereby denying any realist interpretation of both Christ’s presence and sacrifice in the Eucharist. Such expressions he sees as ‘shells’ only and a deeper truth (kernels) are set apart from the shells. Cyril Dugmore comments that in Horneck, “Symbolism is here pushed to the extreme which some may think borders on intellectual dishonesty” (Dugmore, 1942: 122).

The theology of the Eucharist which Horneck expresses is based on a nominalist separation of sign and signified. There are the signs and there are the signified, but the two are not connected in any realist sense. The signs serve as reminders only of the signified, which the communicant knows by spiritual exercise and contemplation on the work of Christ.